Doubtingthomas Philosophy Topic

I think this one thing needs to be pointed out because it is relevant: I wasn’t trying to judge some random person off the street. My goal was to evaluate a philosopher whose expertise I think lies in thinking systems and rational processes to create knowledge.

I think it is fair to test such a philosopher by asking them to explain what you believe is an inconsistency in their conclusions. This exercise of evaluating a philosopher by questioning inconsistencies in their conclusions I think falls much more into the realm of philosophy than the specific topic the conclusions are about.

For this reason, to the best of my understanding, I didn’t for a moment think I was breaking what I believed that rule meant. If I had started asking about borders and immigration instead, that would have clearly broken the rule because to me that is clearly politics not philosophy.

Here are some sources:

First one

Arizona State Legislature Holds Public Hearing on 2020 Election

I watched this 11 hour video (at 3x to 3.5x speed and skipped parts at the start and end, but i saw all the witnesses testify and got the gist of the opening and closing remarks). it’s good if you want to understand election fraud with examples from witnesses and see a bit about the political process. i noticed they generally do a good job of asking different, useful and short questions, and they clearly take notes so they can ask about something from 10min ago.

now i’ve started watching: Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani, Witnesses Testify at Michigan House Oversight Committee](Curiosity – curi's Microblogging)

Second one

#18940 I finished the Michigan one and also watched all of:

Trump Legal Team Presents CLEAR Evidence of Fraud Before Georgia Senate Committee 12/3/20

If you care about politics and hold political opinions, you should take a look and see for yourself. It’s fun to stay out of it but don’t be a low info person who is judging others and thinks they know which side is right.

I think there’s a chance I’m going to get banned again because I posted about politics. I am defending myself against the claim that I am recklessly attributing ideas to people.

None of your “sources” are Elliot actually saying the ideas you attributed to him.

In the post he links to, you said:

None of the quotes you gave are quotes of him saying that the election was stolen. You didn’t even attempt an explanation of how you thought those quotes were sources for your claims.

Also, your “sources” contain misquotes.

E.g., You quote the following as if they are two separate quotes (when they were actually consecutive with nothing else between them). The second part is quoted as if they were words that Elliot actually said. But it was actually a link, and the words are the title of the video that he was linking, not something he actually said.

You are making it look like Elliot said that there was “CLEAR Evidence of Fraud”, when all he did was link a video with that title.

This seems to be saying that you are purposely making posts that you believe to be against the rules.

Your attempt to “defend” yourself included more instances of you recklessly attributing ideas to Elliot. You misquoted him, as I explained in the post above. You also claimed that your quotes were sources for your original claims, which made it more likely that someone would read your misquotes as literal quotes of Elliot.

Even if you had managed to come up with quotes of Elliot saying the things you said he did, that would not be a defense: Whether you recklessly attribute ideas to someone does not depend on whether they have ever stated the ideas.

You are attributing ideas to Elliot based on your memory, without any specific quotes. You are specifically doing this with ideas that you think are especially bad. That is recklessly attributing ideas to someone, whether or not it turns out your memory was correct.

In this case, when you tried to come up with quotes, you did not give quotes of him saying what you claimed, even though you apparently thought you had.

So you do not actually care about US politics, and don’t want to discuss US politics. But you are bringing up a potentially complicated and nuanced political issue. You are apparently expecting Elliot to thoroughly walk you through his ideas and reasoning, despite you not understanding the issue, not caring about it, and not knowing enough about it to be able to appreciate or understand any complications or nuance that may arise.

So what does Elliot – or anyone really – have to gain by trying to have a discussion about the political topic you brought up? How can anyone have an effective and productive discussion with you about a topic that you admit that you don’t care about and don’t want to discuss, and that you don’t understand and don’t want to understand?

And why are you bringing up a topic that you aren’t even interested in? You give this reason:

So you don’t understand Elliot’s opinions or views on an issue that you admit you are not interested and do not know much about. You think that his ideas have contradictions.

You feel personally pessimistic, and you attribute that feeling to Elliot’s views. You seem to think that somehow Elliot’s ideas are responsible for your feelings.

But you have already admitted that you don’t understand his ideas and you aren’t even interested in the topic or knowledgeable about it. If you don’t understand someone’s ideas, and they are talking about a topic that you are uninterested in and don’t know much about, you should consider that you might not be able to accurately spot whether there are contradictions in those ideas.

You have an understanding of Elliot’s ideas. That understanding contains contradictions. Instead of attributing those contradictions to your own misunderstandings, you have attributed them to Elliot’s ideas. You feel bad and pessimistic about that. You want Elliot to fix that for you by either explaining to you exactly why his ideas don’t contradict OR by being unable to explain that to you, so that you can simply conclude that Elliot is biased and wrong. And then presumably you think you will feel better because you can just stop caring about Elliot’s worldview (which you think is pessimistic).

You are basically asking Elliot to put a bunch of time and energy into explaining his ideas to you – ideas that you don’t understand and won’t even quote – because you feel bad about your own misunderstandings of his ideas. And you want him to do this about ideas that you explicitly stated you do not care about and do not want to learn about, and that he has also stated that he does not want to talk about.

You believe his ideas are bad an contradictory. Instead of thinking that maybe it was your understanding that was wrong, you decided it was his ideas that were wrong. And instead of being careful to get his ideas correct, by using specific quotes, you just stated your own flawed understanding of his ideas – from memory – as if they were factual statements about things he said. And one of your stated goals in doing this is to discredit Elliot, at least in your own mind. You want to prove to yourself that he is wrong.

So you purposely stated ideas that you think were bad and wrong and attributed those ideas to Elliot, without being careful to make sure you were getting them right, and without using any quotes. And you did this about a topic that he already stated he did not want to talk about. And you continued to do it even after he told you to stop. And you did it despite admitting no interest in or knowledge about the topic. And you did it because you wanted free labor from Elliot, in order to make yourself feel better.

If Elliot did decide to discuss this issue with you, and actually go through all the effort of finding quotes of what he actually said, and explaining everything, what would he have to gain? How does he benefit from that conversation?

You are not interested in the topic. You don’t actually care about the conclusion of this specific issue. You are explicitly searching for things to prove to yourself that Elliot is biased. Say he spends dozens or hundreds of hours and writes thousands of words to explain this issue to you in a way that you find convincing – which could include you actually having to learn a lot about US politics and elections and other things that you have already stated you don’t even care about – what will be gained?

You won’t be satisfied. You said yourself that you brought up this issue because it seems like the “clearest example” of something Elliot is getting wrong. So even if he spends hundreds of hours and manages to convince you he actually doesn’t have contradictory views in this specific case, that won’t satisfy you. You will just move on to the next issue you think he is wrong about.

So in summary: You came onto Elliot’s forum – on a thread that you were given after being a problem poster multiple times, which was meant to allow you to have a way to discuss philosophy – and attributed ideas to him that you think are bad and wrong and contradictory, without quotes and without double checking whether you were even remembering things correctly. Your reasoning for this is that you want him to put multiple hours of work into giving you free personal tutoring to explain ideas that he already said that he didn’t want to talk about, and which you aren’t even interested in and don’t want to discuss, for the explicit purpose of trying to prove to yourself that he is biased and wrong so that you can feel better about dismissing his ideas. And if that doesn’t work, and it turns out actually this was your misunderstanding and his ideas in this area were not contradictory, then you can just move on to requesting hundreds of hours of free personal tutoring on the next topic you think he is wrong about.

I wasn’t expecting Elliot to thoroughly walk me through his ideas and reasoning, as illustrated by what I said here:

Where did I say anything about not understanding the issue or not knowing enough about it to appreciate or understand any complications or nuances that may arise? I won’t claim to be thoroughly versed in it, but I do have a decent grasp of it and am willing to learn more if required to understanding nuances. I don’t care about the issue itself. I was interested in analysing the morality of Trump and Elliot’s assessment of whether Trump’s actions were moral, and to that extent, I am willing to learn more about it if needed to analyse it properly.

Edit: changed second word of last sentence. from am to was

I used the quote functionality on the curi.us website and copy-pasted the resulting text as is to avoid making a mistake.

I feel like I am being treated unfairly in some ways. My intentions are being assumed to be bad. If I wanted to mislead, why would I have provided links to the source where one can go and see the original post?

I also think it was kind of you to invest significant time in explaining what I did wrong.

There’s a third option. He could have provided a link to a creator whose explanations he endorses.

I’m confused about this. I would really appreciate if you could help me understand this better.

If it turns out my memory was correct, then how can it still be considered reckless attribution?